Question

A developer needs Copilot Chat to generate a standard function that converts a Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit. The task is well-known, has an unambiguous specification, and follows a common mathematical formula. The developer wants the fastest, most efficient prompt that still reliably produces correct output. Which prompting approach is most appropriate here?

Accepted Answer

Use a zero-shot prompt with a clear, specific instruction describing the desired function and its input/output, without providing any worked examples

Answer

Provide at least five few-shot examples of unrelated unit conversions so Copilot can infer the general conversion pattern before generating the function

Answer

Paste a long block of the entire codebase as context so Copilot has maximum information before attempting the task

Answer

Ask Copilot an open-ended question like 'can you help with temperatures?' and iteratively narrow it down over several turns